Exhibition: Out of Office - Art in Business

This winter, for the first time, over 150 rarely seen highlights from the art collections of several major Dutch companies will exchange their familiar home on the office wall for a spot in the museum. Out of Office . Art in Business, an exhibition organised by Singer Laren in collaboration with the Netherlands Association of Corporate Art Collections (VBCN), will offer a surprising overview of 75 years of Dutch art from corporate collections. From 11 December to 7 April this exhibition, featuring work by artists like Shinkichi Tajiri, Karel Appel, Marlene Dumas, Armando, Jan Schoonhoven and Folkert de Jong, will reveal some surprising connections between artists from different periods and different collections.

Surprising encounters

Out of Office will showcase the multifaceted range of Dutch art from 1945 to the present that is held in corporate collections, tying in with the VBCN’s efforts to bring art treasures from its members’ collections to the general public. The exhibition will be based on a number of themes, grouping artworks from different periods and leading to some surprising artistic encounters. The theme of ‘Liberated’ will bring together Lucebert, Karel Appel and David Bade. Works by Carel Willink, Erwin Olaf and others will enter into a dialogue in the gallery devoted to the theme ‘On the Shoulders of Giants’. ‘Guilty’ will be the element connecting Pyke Koch, Armando and Ronald Ophuis. Portraits by Ina van Zyl, Marlene Dumas, Levi van Veluw, René Daniëls and many others will feature under the title ‘Ecce Homo’. Finally, ‘A New Skin’ will feature spectacular installations by artists like Folkert de Jong and Peter Struycken. “It is a delight to be able to bring together at Singer Laren the finest, most exciting and most intriguing Dutch artworks of the past 75 years from the rich collections of Dutch companies.” Jan Rudolph de Lorm, Museum director of Singer Laren

Publication

A catalogue with essays by Edo Dijksterhuis and Catharien Romijn will be published by Lecturis to coincide with the exhibition. The publication focuses on the history of the corporate collections and what the works mean to the companies.

Photo by Peter Tijhuis - on the right, sculpture Toren van Babel, Shinkichi Tajiri